“Soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance be revealed… I will bring foreigners who love the name of the Lord to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer… Their offering shall be accepted on my altar; my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” Is 56,1

Dear parishioners,

I feel as though we are experiencing the gradual fulfilment of this passage from this Sunday’s first reading. We are now preparing for phase 3 of our gradual re-opening of the church for participation at Sunday mass.

Effective Saturday, August 29th, we will welcome people to attend three new Sunday masses. We are restoring the Saturday 5:00 p.m. mass, and the Sunday 8:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m., so as to maintain a healthy distance in time between Sunday masses, so as to avoid people crossing paths who are leaving the last mass and arriving for the next mass. The maximum number of people at any gathering remains at 50.

This means that effective Monday, August 23rd, 9:00 a.m., you will be able to pre-register for any one of a total of five Sunday masses, the two already in operation, and the three that we are adding.

We continue to ask that you register for no more than one Sunday mass per month, in order to provide an opportunity for as many people as possible to attend Sunday mass.

Another important new development: effective Monday August 30th, when you go to our parish website to pre-register online for mass attendance, you will find a new page, called “signedupgenius.com”. It is attractive, easy to use, much easier to manage, and doesn’t have the glitches that we are experiencing with our current registration page. In addition, when you register on this page, you will receive an automatic email reply, confirming that you have successfully registered. 

A third important development: the new normal is going to last a long time, so we need to find ways to make the task of ushering sustainable over the long term. To this end, effective Saturday August 29th at the first 5:00 p.m. mass of anticipation, and at every gathering in the church thereafter, we will place a disinfectant spray bottle and a roll of paper towels in each accessible pew, and we will ask those in attendance to disinfect the area they have occupied. When we will have depleted our current stock of disinfectant, our spray bottles and paper towels will be replaced by easier to use disinfectant wipes. This will considerably lighten the load of our ushers and ensure, at least we hope, that they will persevere in this task.

A few other items of interest…

We are now at 958 subscriptions to our Youtube page. When we reach 1000, we qualify for a bit of revenue from Youtube. We’re just 42 subscriptions short of this goal. Please subscribe, and help the parish to generate a bit of extra income!

Just a reminder that if you register as a parishioner on our website, you will automatically receive an email containing the pastor’s corner every week, as well as any other messages that we may need to communicate as widely as possible.

We have succeeded, I think, in updating the message you receive when you call the parish office. It better reflects our current reality. Allow me to repeat that Theresa is on indefinite leave, and Rocelyn has left us permanently, so please don’t leave messages in their voice mailbox. I also wish to point out that if you wish to leave a message, you must leave your name and a phone number if you wish us to get back to you.

Formed.org is now directly on our parish website, with information as to what you can find there, a link to go directly to the website, and the parish password to get in. Please check it out. More on Formed.org also in this bulletin.

We cannot have a collection at Sunday masses, but I remind you that there is a large wooden box that has been securely fastened to the last pew in the centre aisle of the church, in which you can deposit Sunday offering envelopes, or any other form of donation.

I pray for a pleasant, and most importantly, a safe week for you all. 

Fr. Guy